Will rising carbon dioxide levels really boost plant growth?

Plants have become an unlikely subject of political debate. Many projections suggest that burning fossil fuels and the resulting climate change will make it harder to grow enough food for everyone in the coming decades. But some groups opposed to limiting our emissions claim that higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) will boost plants’ photosynthesis and so increase food production.

New research published in Science suggests that predicting the effects of increasing CO₂ levels on plant growth may actually be more complicated than anyone had expected.

To understand what the researchers have found out requires a bit of background information about photosynthesis. This is the process that uses light energy to power the conversion of CO₂ into the sugars that fuel plant growth and ultimately provide the food we depend on. Unfortunately, photosynthesis is flawed.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a Senior Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry from the University of Westminster, Stuart Thompson - “Will rising carbon dioxide levels really boost plant growth?”

One of the oldest climate change experiments has led to a troubling conclusion

One of the regular complaints of climate change doubters and skeptics is that scientific projections of a dire future are too heavily based on computer simulations, or models, which — they say — rest on a variety of questionable assumptions.

Heated and control plots in a long-term soil
 warming study at Harvard Forest, Petersham,
Mass. Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological
 Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., and colleagues
began the study in 1991. 

But a major climate change study published Thursday relied not on models but experimental data — a 26-year record of observations, no less — to reach a conclusion perhaps just as worrying. The research, tracking the emissions of carbon from artificially heated plots of a forest in Massachusetts, reinforces fears about the possibility of a climate change “feedback” involving the planet’s soils, one that could pile on top of and substantially worsen the ongoing warming trend triggered by the burning of fossil fuels.

“The study is one of the longest if not the longest climate change ecosystem experiment, beyond the one we are running in our own planet,” said Pep Canadell, an expert on the Earth’s carbon cycle at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia. He was not part of the research.

Read Chris Mooney’s story on The Washington Post -  “One of the oldest climate change experiments has led to a troubling conclusion.”

Solar power will exceed thermal output by 2027: Economic Survey

NEW DELHI: India’s renewable energy programme is proceeding at such a rapid pace that its contribution to total power generation will equal that of coal in 2026 and surpass it the following year, according to projections made in the second volume of the Economic Survey released on Friday. 

India has set itself the goal of 175
GW of renewable power capacity
by 2022 and 275 GW by 2027.

At present, India’s installed power capacity is 327 GW of which thermal power from coal comprises 192.16 GW or 55% of the total, while renewable energy capacity is 57.26 MW or 18% of the total. India has set itself the goal of 175 GW of renewable power capacity by 2022 and 275 GW by 2027. 

Read The Economic Times story - “Solar power will exceed thermal output by 2027: Economic Survey.”

Sit back and watch at the West Antartic ice sheet melts

Bradley Odpyke.

A few decades ago the likely outcomes of climate change were thought to be little more than hypothetical projections.

That has all changed – although those projections, which were never conjectural at all for they were measurable scientific realities, they have now become something that can actually be seen.

Of course, while all the remarkable weather events of the past decade could be seen, and felt, the where always discounted by the doubters as nothing more than a continuation of the world’s natural viability in the weather.

Now however, the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is a clearly visible outcome of climate change.

Writing on The Conversation, a researcher in physical and mathematical sciences at the Australian National University, Bradley Opdyke, says in a story headed: “We can now only watch as West Antarctic ice sheets collapse” described this “worrying moment”.